finalized, not only in the senate, as you know, tom, but the house of representatives and signed into law by the president. >> there's so many contentious details here. any one of them might trip this up, but there are two big pillars we're talking about today more than anything else. the first one seems to have been successful. it has to do with the idea of where you're going to put the threshold for maintaining the bush tax cuts. the republicans wanted to maintain the bush tax cuts for everyone. the white house said no, not for everyone. we want to do it for middle income people, but wealthier people can pay more. the president wanted to say anybody making over $250,000 as a couple in this country should pay more. they should go to a higher level of tax rates. however, the republicans by and large said they didn't want anybody to pay more taxes, but some said, if you're going to pay more, let's make it a million dollars a year or more. where we are is somewhere down around here, around $450,000 a year per couple. this seems to be largely one of the coups today where the parties seem to